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Speaking to i, Sir James Dyson said the government had 'watered down' its commitment to electric vehicles

He was speaking to mark the launch of the permanent Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College

Sir James Dyson has accused the government of “watering down” its commitment to electric vehicles after failing to take his advice to ban petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.

The British inventor, 72, said he met with prime minister Theresa May’s PPSs, (parliamentary private secretaries, who work on behalf of senior ministers in government) to discuss making electric cars compulsory a year ago.

“I said: ‘Why don’t you make electric cars compulsory by 2030?’. This was a year ago, so it gave the industry 12 years to adjust, build the charging points, etc,” Sir James told i, speaking to mark the permanent opening of the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College, London.

“Two days later, they announce it’ll be 2040, 22 years on. It just seemed watered down, I don’t know why they watered it down. Maybe pressure from industry, I don’t know. But I thought that was a shame.”

Sir James on the opening of the permanent Dyson School of Design Engineering:

“My interest throughout my professional life has been helping to fund and support an applied design form of engineering, so students don’t see engineering as a dry, academic subject, but one where they can apply their engineering to a product, or a product with a business opportunity.

“You may well attract more people to engineering and science if they’re applying it and learning design and how to create a product at the same time, there’s no reason why you can’t do both. I think it’s more exciting when the academic work becomes more pertinent, if you’re actually applying it. The Imperial course is 50 per cent female, and I think that’s a remarkable achievement”

A report from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee in October last year called for the ban to be brought forward to 2032, calling the “effectively zero emission by 2040” plan both “vague and unambitious.”

The government also cut grants for buyers of new eco-friendly cars in autumn last year, getting rid of incentives to purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles, which run on a combination of combustion engines and battery power, and slashing the grant for pure electric vehicles from £4,500 to £3,500.

Patent details of the forthcoming electric car were published by the Patent Office last week, detailing vague plans for a vehicle which could require the driver to adopt a reclining seated position and could sport “very large” wheels.

The top five electric vehicles – by i motoring correspondent Matt Allan

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Larger wheels will make the vehicle, suitable for driving in both urban and rural environments and potentially help to extend its driving range, according to the patents, while positioning the driver in a reclining seated position would facilitate a low cabin height and shallow windscreen angle, reducing drag while driving and also increasing its driving range.

The patents were “deliberately light on specifics” to avoid competitors copying the detailed features, Sir James explained in an email to staff last week.

How Dyson’s electric car may appear (Photo: Dyson)

“Unfortunately, you now have to patent very early in the development process, which gives competitors a head start they wouldn’t have had otherwise,” he told i.

“When I was at school, we were told if you copied someone it was cheating. I think it’s quite wrong, in an industrial and professional context, people are able to copy people and it’s not considered a crime and they’re able to get away with it.

“My view, apart from the fact I hate people copying me, is that it does the opposite of creating competition, I think it decreases it and makes all the products look similar.”

The businessman, who is worth £12.6bn and ranked the fifth richest man in the UK according to the Sunday Times Rich List, is a long-time vocal supporter of Brexit, and currently splits his time between the UK and Singapore.

“The main market for electric vehicles is China, so we want to be close to China and get into it under the ASEAN agreement (a trade bloc agreement for south East Asian nations),” he continued.

“Of course, all our competitors make their cars in China as well, so those cars are lost to England. It’s also true, I think, that 90 per cent of the components in cars made in Britain come from abroad.”

More than 1.51m cars were built in the UK last year, the vast majority of which are exported, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

Dyson employs 500 engineers working on its forthcoming car based in Hullavington, Wiltshire, which is also the location of the vehicle’s test facilities, he said, adding he was sure that making a car in Britain was “quite the point”.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron is given a tour of the Dyson factory by Sir James Dyson in 2014 (Photo: Newsteam – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

“Even cars that are supposedly made in Britain like the Mini, or Discovery, which is made in Czechoslovakia, or in the case of Rover, which is made in England, all the components come from abroad and are assembled by robots,” he said.

“There are people assembling cars, of course, but we provide jobs for people who are engineering cars.

“When we moved our production of vacuum cleaners to south east Asia, we consistently increased the amount of employment at Malmesbury, but, of course, there it’s engineers and other people running the business, research scientists, rather than assembly people.”

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